On
occasion of today’s "International Holocaust Remembrance Day" which
commemorates the 69th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz
death camp, we like to draw attention to an article on the rise of
"double genocide" theory in Germany politics which appeared in "Jüdische
Allgemeine" (in German).

The article states that Germany’s
new coalition government of conservatives (CDU) and social democrats
(SPD) agreed on prioritizing the reviewing and commemoration of the
injustice of the socialist German Democratic Republic. In the
coalition’s agreement, the commemoration of Nazi crimes does no longer
play a special role. While the agreement holds nothing for the survivors
of Nazi crimes of which many still have not been compensated, the rates
for victims of GDR injustice will be increased. The author sees a
political paradigm shift at work: Had the mixing of Nazi crimes and GDR
injustice been previously avoided, the equation is just around the
corner. Linguistically, the turn towards a totalitarian view of 20th
century history is clearly noticeable. Terms like "Nazi reign of terror"
and "Stalinism" or the formula of "two German dictatorships" seem more
than semantic coincidences.